This hasn't happened yet but it could.

Perhaps most important, this new wave of innovation relies on a disaggregation within higher education, a common phenomenon in mature industries but one that the higher education industry has remarkably resisted for centuries. Indeed, one could argue that the core of the educational enterprise has always been vertically integrated in the body of the faculty. That is, faculty members have thought up new courses and programs, developed syllabi, outlined learning objectives, "curated" the necessary content and learning artifacts (mostly choosing books and chapters and articles), walked the proposed courses/programs through necessary approvals (governance), taught the courses/programs, advised students, stepped in when students needed help, administered assessments and graded performance, and periodically revised the course/program. That was the way of the world until online technology entered the picture.

Online learning has disaggregated the model. Today, various players perform various aspects of what was once the exclusive province of faculty:

• A faculty member might be hired as the subject matter expert to develop a course but never teach it or be involved in it again.
• Faculty might be hired to teach a course that is already developed and handed to them, with little room for them to change the course (common in large-scale programs where standardization is important).
• Third-party providers (e.g., Smarthinking) might provide student tutorial help.
• Students might turn to a peer-to-peer learning network (e.g., OpenStudy) instead of to faculty when they run into trouble.
• Adaptive learning technologies might intelligently guide a student's pathway through the learning content.
• The person assessing a student's work might not be the faculty member teaching the course (e.g., Western Governors University) and some MOOCs using peer assessment).
• Self-guided learning models (e.g., the College for America program at Southern New Hampshire University) might have no faculty instruction at all.

Paul LeBlanc and Educause